Perhaps, like most of us in a foreign country, he was incapable of placing people, selecting a frame for their picture, as he would at home; therefore all Americans had to be judged in a pretty equal light, and on this basis his companions appeared to be tolerable examples of local color and national character.
Grady for an instant felt the oddest loss: poor Peter, he knew her even less, she realized, than Apple, and yet, because he was her only friend, she wanted to tell him: not now, sometime. And what would he say? Because he was Peter, she trusted him to love her more: if not, then let the sea usurp their castle, not the one they’d built to keep life out, it was already gone, at least for her, but another, that one sheltering friendships and promises.
You are a man of extreme passion, a hungry man not quiet sure where his appetite lies, a deeply frustrated man striving to project his individuality against a backdrop of rigid conformity. You exist in a half-world suspended between two superstructures, one self-expression and the other self-destruction.
Royal summoned mourners. They came from the village, from the neighboring hills and, wailing like dogs at midnight, laid siege to the house. Old women beat their heads against the walls, moaning men prostrated themselves: it was the art of sorrow, and those who best mimicked grief were much admired. After the funeral everyone went away, satisfied that they’d done a good job.
You are a human being with a free will. Which puts you above the animal level. But if you live your life without feeling and compassion for your fellowman – you are as an animal – “an.
If we know the past, and live the present, it is possible that we dream the future?
When you’re grown up, will we still be friends?
The midnight hours were her time to be selfish and vain.
Flannery O’Connor had a certain genius. I don’t think John Updike has, or Norman Mailer or William Styron, all of whom are talented, but they don’t exceed themselves in any way. Norman Mailer thinks William Burroughs is a genius, which I think is ludicrous beyond words. I don’t think William Burroughs has an ounce of talent.
Be consistent in your attitude towards her and do not add anything to the impression she has that you are weak, not because you need her good-will but because you can expect more letters like this, and they can only serve to increase your already dangerous anti-social instincts.
I knew damn well I’d never be a movie star. It’s too hard; and if you’re intelligent, it’s too embarrassing.
What I’ve found does the most good is just to get into a taxi and go to Tiffany’s. It calms me down right away, teh quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there, not with those kind men in their suites, and that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets. If I could find a real-life place that made me feel like Tiffany’s, then I’d buy some furniture and give the cat a name.
Dolly said that when she was a girl she’d liked to wake up winter mornings and hear her father singing as he went about the house building fires; after he was old, after he’d died, she sometimes heard his songs in the field of Indian grass. Wind, Catherine said; and Dolly told her: But the wind is us – it gathers and remembers all our voices, then sends them talking and telling through the leaves and the fields – I’ve heard Papa clear as day. On.
All children are morbid: it’s their one saving grace.
One by one the household emerges, looking as though they’d like to kill us both; but it’s Christmas, so they can’t.
Of course there is a Santa Claus. It’s just that no single somebody could do all he has to do. So the Lord has spread the task among us all. That’s why everybody is Santa Claus. I am. You are.
But when the crowd caught sight of the murderers, with their escort of blue-coated highway patrol-men, it fell silent, as though amazed to find them humanly shaped.
He may successfully accumulate, but he does not accumulate success, for he is his own enemy and is kept from truly enjoying his achievements.
Like many people with a bold fondness for volunteering intimate information, anything that suggested a direct question, a pinning-down, put her on guard.
Scrubbed, combed, as tidy as two dudes setting off on a double date, they went out to the car.